Allie X, the ever-morphing musical vessel of Alexandra Hughes, is taking her artistry to different worlds. Change has by no means scared the Canadian-born, Los Angeles-based professional of synth-pop. Since 2015, she’s been churning out hits beloved by the web and airwaves alike, shape-shifting alongside the best way, constantly protecting the devoted fanbase she’s cultivated on their toes.
After establishing her early sound of catchy indie on earworms like “Bitch” from her 2015 EP, CollXtion I, she shortly shifted her sonic and visible landscapes. Her 2020 LP, Cape God, drew inspiration from HBO’s documentary, Heroin: Cape Cod, USA and America’s opioid epidemic. Despite the inclusion of poppy, danceable singles, the file’s darkish, thematic underbelly demanded consideration. This sort of steadiness continues on Girl With No Face, her junior album from 2024. She traded in drug-plagued East Coast landscapes to color photos of a vampiric ’80s Los Angeles, to spin tales of Hollywood’s perils and to hone in on themes of id and darkish femininity all around the tracklist. It blessed followers and critics with futuristic energy pop hits, particularly “Galina” and “Off With Her Tits,” that don’t draw back from drawing poignant lo-fi inspiration from hallmarks like Depeche Mode and Cocteau Twins.
Her latest providing, Happiness Is Going To Get You, is her most formidable venture so far. She’s taken to social media to begin curating the awful however inviting world she’s constructed for the 12 new tracks and visually, this equates to black robes and veils, maps with mysterious coordinates and the most important, boldest, blackest hairdo, spottable from wherever you might be in her large world. She’s employed an alter-ego, Infant Marie, because the protagonist who will function a vessel for the album’s lyrical content material.
The singles from Happiness Is Going To Get You solidify Allie X because the singular inventive she’s at all times been. “Is Anybody Out There?” is a piano-driven energy ballad about apocalyptic apathy. “Reunite,” fueled by bouncy, baroque preparations and paired with scripture of lesbian love (and heartbreak), is among the star’s greatest so far, and is a tune solely she may create.
Allie X’s originality and self-actualization are to be strongest on this new period. It’s the results of separating herself from earlier label and business ties. Self-written, produced and revealed, Happiness is Going To Get You is a world of her personal. The subsequent step is transporting the remainder of us to it.
Allie X sat down with PAPER every week earlier than the album’s launch to debate Happiness Is Going To Get You, her newfound inventive possession, and the significance of wigs.
Happiness is Going To Get You comes out so quickly. What are you feeling proper now?
It’s bizarre. I need extra time, however I additionally simply need it to be out. I really feel like my data are supposed to be consumed as full our bodies of labor, so I’m longing for that to occur. I’m additionally feeling the stress of numbers and analytics, so it’s a bit of each emotion. Numerous adrenaline, that’s for certain.
I really like how conceptual this file is. There’s the introduction of an alter-ego, Infant Marie? Could you inform me about her and the way the concept for this album originated?
It was nowhere close to totally baked once I began the music. It was an idea that was impressed by the music, and quite a lot of the concepts got here from a superb artist and photographer named Moni Haworth. She’s completely good. She’s such a rebellious thinker. When she heard my album, she heard quite a lot of nostalgia throughout the baroque devices in there and the sonic threads which are of a special time. She additionally informed me that she sees me as a one-woman touring present. The Infant Marie is nearly that. She’s a vaudevillian, burlesque performer. There’s a photographer who took photos of ladies in New Orleans within the ’20s, and there’s a little bit of that as effectively. Even although it’s a dense and sci-fi narrative, I actually love and internalized this idea we developed on a private stage.
How did the laborious change are available a post-Girl With No Face period? How did you go about wrapping that album and coming into into these new concepts?
I see them as very straight associated. Girl With No Face took a very long time. There was all this pent-up anger, and it was tough and such a problem. But it needed to come out. It cleared this emotional house in me for one thing utterly totally different. This file was very simple and poured out effortlessly. The inventive course of was seamless and so unusual. I used to be sitting at a piano, writing songs like “Who is she?” She’s the Infant Marie, I assume.
Would you say it’s been a special course of from every of your different data? Or do others stand out as equally simple and clean processes?
I actually discovered my voice over the previous 5 years, by working in isolation and taking up inventive and managerial management over every little thing. I don’t actually work with collaborators anymore. I’m now the producer. In that method, it’s much like Girl With No Face, because it’s rebellious and has the identical ethos. Like I’m ignoring all tendencies, I don’t care what anybody else is doing, I don’t care what they consider it. For higher or for worse. That’s how I’m going to maintain my profession. It’s crucial that I discovered that. Sonically, it’s very totally different. Maybe you can tie it to Cape God. It’s extra of an natural sound, though there are synthesizers over all of my work. There’s additionally nostalgia, thematically, in Cape God as effectively. What’s humorous is that I really feel a teenage expertise by means of Cape God and Girl With No Face. Being a youngster was a tough time in my life. This is the primary time I’ve written an album the place I really feel like a girl.
I really like that. It’s humorous because it’s the primary “lady” album, and also you’re enjoying Infant Marie. I’m dwelling.
I do know! Yes.
Tell me about among the musical and non-musical influences for this file.
It began as voice memos at a piano. I didn’t know for sure, however I had a sense within the second — imprecise concepts I put to the aspect whereas writing Girl With No Face — that it could be a piano-based album. I knew it could be reflective and have a dreamy sound. My first curiosity was seeing if the voice memos may flip into piano demos. Once I began doing that in Ableton Live, I used to be like, “Well, I’m hearing this bass line and these drums as well.” At that time, I acquired into listening to Fiona Apple once more and Tori Amos. Then bands like AIR and Beck. Lots of hi-fi, well-produced albums of the ’90s and early oughts. Girl With No Face was so lo-fi. After every album, I at all times wish to do one thing so totally different. I used to be ready for a hi-fi subsequent album. As I developed it, I heard delicate rock, a la Paul McCartney’s solo period. There was some Portishead.
I used to be about to ask if there was any trip-hop I may get excited for.
Yes! Absolutely. And Fatboy Slim and the entire emergence of that Bristol sound within the ’90s. I used to be listening to quite a lot of Björk as effectively, who does an incredible job of utilizing electronics in her natural sounds of manufacturing. It was all so enjoyable and indulgent. I completed the file in Copenhagen. I completely nerded out, opening up a piano and enjoying its innards, throwing retro drum machines on it. I used to be nerding out.
I adore it. You middle a lot of your music in particular areas and time intervals. Cape God is so East Coast, Girl With No Face is LA. You completed this one in Copenhagen. Are there locational ties for this album? How about time intervals?
Time and house are the ideas of Happiness Is Going To Get You. It’s grounded within the non-groundedness of the universe. I see listeners in their very own cubes flying by means of house. It’s about that profound expertise and ache and pleasure of being alive, again to my authentic idea of “X,” the place science meets spirituality. The emotion that created these songs was profound for me.
Your music tends to be fairly timeless, regardless of how laborious you’ve leaned into sure time frames.
Thank you.
Lyrically, it’s not caught in time. You point out grocery shops like Gelson’s and Vons. How do you go about including indicators of the occasions like this?
It wasn’t intentional. It was simply one thing that occurred. These issues all felt like they had been in the identical world. The longer I songwrite and produce and worldbuild as a profession, the extra I understand that it’s not even coming from me. I’m simply channeling it. The deeper I am going, the additional eliminated I get, the much less logic I exploit, the simpler it simply comes out.
Were there quite a lot of scrapped tracks for this album?
No, truthfully. Maybe one or two. It’s solely round 35 minutes lengthy with a couple of interludes. I used every little thing I wrote in a short while body.
I really like that. I really like the pattern of shorter initiatives proper now. Saying what it is advisable say, then shifting on.
It works very effectively with our ecosystem of music. We eat so quickly. There are shitty issues about know-how, clearly, however what’s cool about music is that you simply don’t have only one likelihood anymore. You can simply maintain throwing spaghetti on the wall. No one’s gonna minimize you off since you’re direct to the web.
Especially now that you simply’ve reached some extent of no labels or ties. It’s taken a very long time, however you don’t need to depend on these exterior collaborators. You have this inventive management.
Yeah. I acquired myself out of all these shitty contracts. Anyone who was slowing me down or holding me again is now out of the image. When I completed these demos in February, I assumed, “Can I get this album out by the Fall?” as a result of there’s a lot concerned with taking pictures paintings and mixing and mastering, all this stuff. I remembered how I used to wish permission, and so many issues had been gatekept from me. This time, I used to be like, “I can do it.” I used to be so targeted and moved by means of this gatekept business in a method I by no means had earlier than. Happiness is Going To Get You is a celebration of me being a inventive and getting it to my followers in a method that I’ve by no means been in a position to do earlier than. No matter the way it does, that in itself is one thing I actually have a good time presently.
Were there thematic or conceptual concepts that you simply explored on this file that you simply hadn’t anticipated while you first began?
Yeah. An empathetic and mature viewpoint got here on sure songs that I hadn’t voiced or felt impressed to voice in a musical method earlier than. That’s gotta be factor.
What songs are you excited for the world to get its fingers on?
“7th Floor” is enjoyable. I by no means depend on issues going effectively with songs, however that one has potential. Some of essentially the most fascinating songs are the title observe and “Uncle Lenny.” I really like the ultimate observe, “It’s Just Light.”
What’s the steadiness between you and this alter-ego? When you selected it, did you have got expectations for filling it? How has that relationship shaped?
There was no stress. I acquired to know her higher. I did a efficiency two nights in the past in London. It was a non-public occasion with chamber preparations of among the songs. We had sheer materials throughout the stage that created a fourth wall. You may play with shadows. I couldn’t see anybody from the stage, so I felt like I used to be within the dice! I felt like I used to be her. I didn’t communicate to the viewers or handle them or something. All I did was an Infant Marie bow on the finish of the present. It was cool. It jogged my memory of masks work or theatre college. I maintain discovering her, and I’ll be exploring it on tour subsequent 12 months.
Tell me concerning the tour. You have dates with Magdalena Bay within the Winter. What’s it going to appear like?
I’m undecided. It’s their tour, so my manufacturing shall be a bit scaled down. I’m occupied with who I can afford in my crew. I don’t want a front-of-house particular person; I want a hair particular person. The hair is a very powerful half.
If we are able to’t get the dice, we are able to a minimum of get the wig.
I haven’t introduced quite a lot of the excursions for subsequent 12 months but, nevertheless it’s going to be hefty.
Let’s speak about working with Moni Haworth.
PAPER’s an enormous fan of hers, proper?
PAPER, sure. But additionally personally. I really like her work. How was taking pictures the duvet along with her?
I by no means know what an album is till I’ve the duvet and visuals discovered. Working with Moni feels such as you’re within the presence of a genius. She wouldn’t like me saying that. Trends don’t matter to her; she received’t take a canopy if she finds the artist or concept boring. She’s hyper-focused on what she’s doing at one time. She deep dives, her creativeness is loopy and she or he’s extremely sensible.
She sounds superb. While you’re occupied with this album by way of time and house, let’s say you have got a time machine. You can go to one previous model of your self and inform her one factor. What model of your self are you talking to and what are you telling her?
I’d go to my sick, teenage self and inform her precisely what she must do to really feel higher.
That’s lovely.
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